On January 27, 1987, senior diplomats from the United States and Mongolia met in a modest ceremony below a portrait of Thomas Jefferson in the Treaty Room of the Department of State in Washington, D.C. Their purpose was to sign the legal documentation needed to finally establish formal diplomatic relations between the two countries. This in turn led to the appointment of the first ambassadors and the opening of new embassies in Ulaanbaatar and Washington. It also became the catalyst for a rapid growth in relations in any number of areas, not only in the political arena but also in...

The accounts vary in content and the dates are not entirely clear, but in either 1899 or 1900 two young men briefly met at the central monastery in Urga, as Ulaanbaatar was then known. One was a prominent lama known as the eighth Jebtsundamba, who 11 years later would lead the Mongolian quest for freedom from the Qing Empire, emerging as the “Holy King” or “Bogd Khan” (1869–1924) of a newly independent state. The other was a young mining engineer from California named Herbert Hoover (1874–1965) who, 28 years later, would become the 31st president of the United...

The establishment of formal diplomatic ties between Mongolia and the United States on January 27, 1987, introduced a new chapter in the US-Mongolian encounter, one that was given further impetus with Mongolia’s “decision for democracy” during the tumultuous and historic events of 1990 and afterwards. Over the past quarter century, these diplomatic ties have also become the foundation and springboard for a growing network of relationships in at least five other main areas—democratic exchanges; development assistance; commercial opportunity; security cooperation; and people-to-people engagement.

Initial diplomatic contacts between the United States and Mongolia were first launched during the early 1900s....

The establishment of diplomatic ties between the United States and Mongolia in January 1987 occurred on the eve of great international change, especially in the Soviet Union when Gorbachev’s introduction of glasnost and perestroika gained traction and ushered in an era of transformation within the various former Soviet republics and beyond.

As a close neighbor of the Soviet Union, Mongolia was also drawn into this period of dramatic change. Many Mongolian students received their higher education either in the Soviet Union or in various Central European countries, including East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary. Some returned to Mongolia with new...

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) launched its first program in Mongolia in November 1991, almost five years after the official opening of bilateral relations between the two countries. More than two decades later, US assistance programs continue to promote useful partnerships between the United States and Mongolia, as rapid expansion in the country’s mining sector is dramatically changing Mongolia’s economic prospects for the future.

During the period 1991 through 2011, the total USAID grant funding to Mongolia exceeded $220 million, with approximately half of this amount for economic growth. A further $31 million has been targeted on...

Early black and white photographs from the beginning of the 1900s give some indication of a United States commercial presence in Mongolia going back more than a century. Two of the more well-known American trading houses at the time were “Andersen and Meyer” and the “Mongolian Trading Company,” the latter based in the Inner Mongolian town of Kalgan but with branch offices in both Urga and the western town of Uliastai.

Indeed, one photo dating to 1918 shows a Mr. Holman, one of the more prominent American business executives of the period, posing outside a large ger decorated with wolf...

While diplomatic ties between Mongolia and the United States formally commenced in January 1987, it would be nearly a decade before those relationships included a strong security dimension. The foundational document for such an engagement was signed in Ulaanbaatar on June 26, 1996. It established a framework for what has become an important and mutually beneficial partnership covering a broad range of areas, including military exchanges and annual joint exercises.

Following the agreement, the Marshall Center in Garmisch, Germany, provided several Russian-speaking American officers to serve in the US embassy as defense liaison officers for terms of four to six...

People-to-people relationships are the lifeblood of any bilateral partnership between countries, the foundation on which all other long-term engagements are built. Long before formal diplomatic relations were established, Americans and Mongolians were meeting together, sometimes in unlikely places. Photographs taken during the Roy Chapman Andrews expeditions to the Gobi during the 1920s attest to some of these early interactions. Even during the long decades of the Cold War, some Americans visited Mongolia as tourists or academics; and a few Mongolians visited the United States, primarily as dependents of Mongolian officials assigned as diplomats to the United Nations.

It was the...

In mid-June 2011, following in the footsteps of his immediate predecessors Ochirbat (1993–97), Bagabandai (1997–2005), and Enkhbayar (2005–08), all of whom had met with serving American presidents, President Elbegdorj traveled to Washington to meet with President Obama at the White House.

His trip to the United States lasted most of the week. It started in San Francisco, where he met the mayor, visited The Asia Foundation and the Asia Museum, spoke at Stanford University, and held a dialogue with members of the Mongolian American community living in the Bay area. He also officially opened the new Mongolian...